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's one of the tools the Federal Reserve used to nurse the economy back to health from the financial crisis, but now, Fed Chief Janet Yellen and her band of policy makers are ready to put their bond-buying program on ice. The Fed announcing Wednesday that as of October, it will stop the unprecedented bond purchases responsible for swelling the central bank's assets to 4.5 trillion dollars since the 2007-2009 crisis, and it's holding rates steady.

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>> The decisions that we've made this year about rates and today about our balance sheet>> are ones we've taken because we feel the U.S. economy is performing well. We are working down our balance sheet because we feel that's a stimulus that in some sense is no longer needed.

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>> In the Fed's view, economic performance has been so good that despite the predictions of a temporary economic slow down due to hurricane Harvey, Irma and Maria and an unexplainable tepidness in inflation, there's one more rate hike in the cards this year. Reuters' fed watcher, Jonathan Spicer.>> This whole press conference and statement can be summed up in the Federal Reserve being hawkish in the shorter term, meaning this December rate hike and keeping three hikes in place for next year.

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But longer term, you saw the policy makers draw down their expectations for how high rates can actually get and how much growth you can actually get.>> That doing little to stop Wall Street's record run. The Dow and S&P 500 closing at all time highs Wednesday. Investors clearly comfortable with the idea the Fed is hell bent on a December rate hike and that won't send the economy into a tailspin.